Always ethereal, always eclectic, I write as the mood strikes, when there intrigue reveals itself. Usually that means something controversial or adventure of some sort.

I've tried really hard to be unprovocative, but have as yet been unsuccessful.

Thursday, 14 December 2006

It was just lunch.

A few days ago I started working customer service, temporary, 3-6 weeks, at a business downtown, which shall go unnamed. Work's fine, if low-paying and a bit slow. But I was very excited about the guy sitting next to me, also a temp, also unnamed. He sounded something like Borat, but I couldn't quite place the accent. The second day I asked where he was from, and, it's Iraq! So we started in on pidgin Arabic with each other, enough so the supervisor was totally astounded and wanted to know what language we were speaking.

Today I invited him out to lunch, to go to the Thai-Moroccan place just down the street, in Pike Place Market. We sat down, and I learned he was actually a Christian, Assyrian, but unlike the church I attended recently, Catholic. I asked if he was going to any churches in the area. He said, No, he wasn't able to interact much with people, because of the mind control.

Ok, I thought. His English isn't the best. Maybe he means something different. So I asked him to explain. He did. It was a combination of manipulation and telepathy. At first he thought it was the Iraqi Intelligence Services, but then when he got here to America, he realized that it was actually the American government, along with many others. He hadn't gotten it all sorted out yet. But they are able to control those around him and him as well, in what they do, how they think, if they're interested in a woman...He realized it was safer for him and everyone else if he didn't interact too much with others.

He wasn't joking. He was completely serious, though I kept on wondering if they were making Borat II at the moment. He said he had been in the Iraqi military, and hadn't really been tortured- except for the pain he felt when they stuck something up his nose. Another physical result was the cracks in his hands he showed me, which looked to me just like slightly chapped hands, but he said leaving the window open at night helps the mind control effects stop on his hands. I asked him if there was a possibility that all this was demonic. He told me, No, because he could tell the difference between the jinn and the mind control.

It's all quite ludicrous, of course. Until I looked at his hands. There actually was something strange about them, and it wasn't that they were chapped. I couldn't quite place it at first. He had no fingerprints. At all.

Oh. And after this week, he'll start his training for his main job. He's been hired as an engineer for Boeing, helping to work to defend this country.

You are quite a writer, Jed. This is quite good. Suspense, leading to climax, hit em w the last sentence. That's classic style. Strangers are eerie, on a train, anywhere we find em. That's their charm for writers. Love, mom